What the Miracles Show About Jesus

Okay, we’ve made it to chapter 2, and at this point we’re going to really start to focus on the ministry of Jesus. Over the rest of the gospel of John the book is essentially organized around 7 miracles from Jesus and 7 “I am” statements made by Jesus. This morning we’re looking at the first of those miracles, where Jesus turns water into wine.

But why would he do that for his first miracle? I mean, my first real, evening date with Macie, I took her to my favorite restaurant, which I told you plenty about last week, and we went and saw Christmas lights—I mean, the first real date you pull out all your best moves, and food and Christmas is what I got.

If you’re familiar with the life of Jesus, then you know that he’s going to heal a blind man, down the road he’ll feed 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish—he’s even going to raise a man named Lazarus from the dead. But the way he starts his ministry, his first miracle that sets the stage, is turning water into wine at a wedding.

Why not start with something bigger? And really, trying to answer that question forces us to consider some much broader questions: Why are miracles—or John refers to them as “signs”—why are they in the Bible in the first place? What’s their purpose? Are the real or are they more symbolic to help carry the story? And do they still happen today?

If I told you I owned my own yacht, and Macie and I enjoy summering on the water, you would rightly have trouble believing me. But if I showed you my bank account first, and you saw that I was a billionaire, then when I told you I like to relax on my yacht you wouldn’t doubt it for a minute. (Neither of those things are true by the way).

But we do something similar with Jesus. Before we ever see Jesus performing a miracle in the gospel of John, we get these words in chapter 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

If you struggle to believe in the miracles of Jesus, it very well might be because you doubt the divine person of Jesus. That’s why John starts his gospel off with who Jesus is before getting to what Jesus did. Because if you understand Jesus as both fully man and fully God who created and sustains all things, then turning some water to wine isn’t really a stretch. I mean, he created water, and he created the process that makes wine.

It’s like when Stan Lee was alive and cameoing in each of his own Marvel movies. Jesus wrote himself into the human story, and with each miracle he does something only the author of the story could do.

So, studying Jesus’ miracles is really, at its core, an invitation to learn more about Jesus. And if his miracles are a reflection of who he is, then we can understand why Jesus performed miracles during his earthly ministry by understanding why he came to earth in the first place and was born as a human. Christ drew near to show us his goodness and to make right what is wrong within us.

We see that broadly in the gospel through his life, death, and resurrection to save us from our sin against God, and we also see it specifically through each miracle, which is both a demonstration and a correction. Miracles demonstrate the sovereignty of God and correct the injustice in his creation. Whether it be giving sight to a man whose blindness is a product of a broken world, or it be providing for a marriage celebration when the wine that was supposed to be there suddenly has run out—each miracle shows us that God is in control and that he can make wrong things untrue.

And so John frames his gospel account around these seven miracles as a way to lay the foundation of faith in a Savior who is sovereign enough to redeem us from the ways we’ve rebelled against him, faithful enough to pursue us even when we were running from him, and loving enough to die for us, so that we can be forgiven and justified by him.

As we look at this first miracle, this first sign at the wedding in Cana this morning, I want us to use this first miracle to help set the stage for each of the miracles we’re going to be studying throughout our time in the gospel of John. Because every single one of them shows us at least four things about Jesus:

1. He does what we can’t do

2. He does better than what we can do

3. He is worthy of our belief, and finally, the miracles show us

4. Jesus is worthy of our worship.

First, each miracle shows us that Jesus does what we can’t do. Let’s start with the first five verses in chapter 2.

John 2:1–5 ESV

¹ On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ² Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. ³ When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” ⁴ And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” ⁵ His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Just like we’ve been doing with the past several sections, John continues to track the time for us. Back in John 1:43, Jesus came to Galilee. He told Philip to follow him, and Philip told Nathanael. Nathanael was skeptical at first, but then he met Jesus, and Jesus changed him. Now, we’re at the third day since Jesus came to Galilee, and him and his disciples (his followers, his students) attend a wedding. We haven’t met all the disciples yet (we won’t do that until chapter 6), so at this point it may have only been the first 5 that were there.

But one other wedding guest is mentioned as well: Jesus’ mother, Mary. And while she pops up a little more in the other gospel accounts, in the book of John she’s only mentioned twice: here at the start of Jesus’ ministry and then once again at the end, at his crucifixion. In both places, Jesus refers to her as “woman.” And that expression wasn’t that endearing then just like it isn’t that endearing now. It’s interesting that Jesus calls his mom “woman” in both settings. We know it’s not because he’s cold to her and doesn’t love her. On the cross, he makes provision for her to make sure she’s taken care of after his death.

But, at the same time, whenever Mary pops up in Jesus’ ministry, he consistently seems to be trying to establish some distance. Even though it’s clear he loves her, he’s also there to die for her, just like everyone else. He wouldn’t want her to presume that she somehow wasn’t called to the same repentance and faith—that her son must first and foremost be her Savior and Lord. How hard that would have been for her in that position, and all the more reason to honor her for her faith.

But at this wedding, Mary is definitely approaching Jesus as her son whom she trusts. She comes up to him in verse 3 and tells him there’s no more wine at the wedding. Now, we don’t know why the wine ran out, but a wedding celebration back then could last as long as a week. The groom took the financial responsibility for the feast, and in a shame-driven culture that would’ve been an incredible embarrassment that could have even opened him up to a lawsuit from the relatives of the bride.

Mary doesn’t approach Jesus just to deliver the unfortunate news. Verse 5 shows that she expected Jesus to do something about it. Some think Mary had seen Jesus perform miracles before, so she had that expectation, but John 2:11 clearly tells us this was the first of Jesus’ miracles. So, most likely Mary was simply looking for help and had come to rely on Jesus in her life.

Whatever her own stake was in the situation, she realized that she couldn’t do anything to fix it. She didn’t have an answer, and so she turned to Jesus. If you’re considering the claims of the Bible and looking into Jesus right now but aren’t currently a Christian, this is the starting point to following him. Not being confident, but being needy.

You don’t show up to the Emergency Room feeling good that you’re not as bad off as that guy missing an arm over there. No, whatever brought you to the ER is the biggest need you have in your life at the moment. It’s real, and it’s debilitating, and that’s why you went. You’ve come for help.

If you only ever study the claims of Jesus but don’t acknowledge how you fall short of the righteousness of Jesus, how you’re not able to be right with God in your own power, then you’re in no better position than the gunshot victim observing the hospital from the outside. You might learn about it, but you won’t benefit from it.

Both the gospel generally and miracles specifically show us that we need Jesus to do what we can’t, and he is more than able. Interestingly, though, Jesus’ initial response to him mom is to essentially say no. He asks her in verse 4, “what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” That response tells us two things: one about Mary and one about Jesus.

Let’s start with Jesus. He says, “My hour has not yet come.” Over and over again, he uses this phrase throughout the gospel, and in every other instance he’s referring to his impending death and resurrection. There’s no reason to doubt that’s what he’s doing here as well. Each time Jesus performed a miracle, it got attention. Like we’ve said, it demonstrated who he is. And as more people got excited about Jesus, that crescendo is what ultimately led to his enemies arresting and killing him.

Now, Jesus is going to do a miracle here, but if we fast forward to verse 9 and then verse 11 at the end of our passage, only the disciples and the servants at the wedding end up knowing what happened. He wasn’t trying to make a big deal of it. His hour hadn’t come.

But then there’s the part about Mary at the start of verse 4. Jesus asks her, “what does this have to do with me?” How do we know this is about Mary? Well, look at how she responds in verse 5: “His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’” So, Mary comes to Jesus with a need, and he says no. Then, she instructs the servants to do whatever he says. What’s changed? Before, Mary was asking Jesus as his mother, but in verse 5 she responds as a believer. That’s why Jesus asked, “what does this have to do with me?”, and it changed her mindset.

When she came to Jesus, she had an expectation, but when she left, she trusted him in faith with whatever solution. What does that look like in your life right now? It’s really easy for us to believe we know the solutions to our problems, and then to ask Jesus to simply do our bidding. But following Jesus isn’t about getting him to say yes to us; it’s about us saying yes to him—whatever that might be, whatever that might look like. It’s not us solving our problems with Jesus; it’s laying our problems at the feet of Jesus.

Mary tells the servants to do whatever Jesus says, and then, starting in verse 6, we see him give instructions to help meet the need. Let’s read verses 6-10.

John 2:6–10 ESV

⁶ Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷ Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. ⁸ And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. ⁹ When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom ¹⁰ and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

In other places, like Mark 7, we learn about the Jewish tradition of handwashing as part of their rites of purification, which was probably what these six stone water jars were for. And so Jesus starts with those jars. Just like many of his other miracles, he uses the obedience of other people. In verses 7 and 8, he gives the servants two things to do: fill the jars with water and then draw some water to bring to the master of the feast.

Now, that word we translate as “draw” was commonly used to describe drawing water from a well. So, while we might assume that the servants filled the jars with water and then took some of that water to the master of the feast, it’s very likely that they filled the jars and then went back to the well to draw something new to bring.

But why would they do that? Remember those jars were used for purification among the Jewish people. And Jesus, just like he’s eventually going to do in the Sermon on the Mount with the Old Testament Law, he says, “I’ve fulfilled that. It’s not abolished: the law still exists, the need to be purified and washed clean still exists. But it is fully accomplished by me.”

So, Jesus has them fill the jars and then move on to draw something new from the well. Something better. When the master of the feast tastes what was water that’s now become wine, he tells the groom in verse 10, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” That shows us a couple things.

First, in case there’s any question or confusion, what Jesus made was actually alcohol. The Greek word we’ve translated “drunk freely” in verse 10 literally refers to inebriation, meaning the master of the feast expected this kind of beverage would be served at the beginning of the celebration, so that people could enjoy it before they potentially became drunk. Notice, he’s not saying that the wine Jesus made was given to drunk people or that he got people drunk. There’s not a moral claim like that being made here and so we shouldn’t try to force that into the text.

But what he is saying, is that Jesus’ wine is the best wine. Now, wine in the ancient world was generally diluted to the point of making it less strong than an American beer. But, like verse 10 points out, what Jesus made was much better than the normal wine. What he provides is superior to what we can provide.

Now, we start to see why Jesus turning water into wine was his first miracle. He simultaneously shows us that his way is more effective and what he offers is more enjoyable. He’s both sovereign over something as large as the created elements and is caring over something as small as a party. He’s a God loving enough to want to help us and big enough to be able to. This is Christ, our great God. As the 18th century poet Alexander Pope summarized Jesus turning water to wine: “The conscious water saw its maker and blushed.”

Can we say the same ourselves? When we approach Scripture, when we pray, when we consider Jesus, do we find ourselves similarly blushing because of his overwhelming glory? You see, the reason why Jesus’ wine was greater is because he is greater. What he made through his miracles was more effective and more enjoyable because he is more effective and more enjoyable—than anything we can base our lives upon.

Why would you build your life upon pursuing good wine when you can follow the creator of wine? Why would you content yourself with a weeklong party when you can enjoy the marriage supper of the lamb for all eternity? Jesus’ first miracle, from the filling of the purification jars to the drawing of great wine, shows us that he’s better than our attempts to clean ourselves and more competent than our ability to provide for ourselves.

You cannot make yourself clean enough to be right with the all-righteous God of the universe. All you have to do is take a stroll through the book of Leviticus, and you’ll see how many laws God gave his people for ceremonial cleansings that were based on any kind of situation you could think of.

You ever been talking to someone you were interested in and then you finally have the courage to ask them out? Maybe you ask if they want to go to dinner with you on Friday, but they saw they’re busy. So you ask about lunch the following weekend, and “ugh”, they already have plans. So, finally you just ask if you can call them sometime, and they say they don’t have any more minutes on their phone. At some point, you’ve gotta take the hint that all these roadblocks to finding time together just means its not gonna happen.

That’s kinda one of the main points of the law in the Old Testament. When every little thing you do requires you to be washed so you can be ceremonially clean before God, at some point you’ve gotta realize that you can’t make yourself clean. We fill up the jars, and we keep using them up.

But not Jesus—he filled them to the brim, and with him, they stay full, because when we believe in Jesus’ ability to make us clean before God through his death and resurrection instead of relying on anything we could do to clean our lives up ourselves, then he washes us whiter than snow. And that’s the conclusion we see in verse 11. Let’s look one more time at our passage.

John 2:11 ESV

¹¹ This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

After seeing Jesus turn water into wine, John concludes the narrative saying, “his disciples believed in him.” Honestly, that’s an important part of testing the stories you might hear of miraculous things even today. Whatever it was, did it strengthen belief in Jesus as the main focus, or was it more about a particular ministry, or a charismatic leader, or a way of doing church?

As we study each of the miracles in the gospel on John, we’re going to find that they led to both greater belief in Jesus and greater opposition against Jesus. But why would Jesus performing a miracle lead more people to oppose him?

Well, why does Apple coming out with better and more convenient devices always rile up the Android and Google users to say things like, “they’re just copying features we already had” and “I’ll never get an iPhone”? Clearly, Apple’s got a better product. But when someone’s already predisposed against the brand, then they’ll find a way to write off anything good that brand might do.

According to Scripture, we are predisposed against God. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that, because of our sinful nature, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

That’s why John mentioned in verse 13 of chapter 1 that we need a new birth, a spiritual birth that’s given to us by God. So, when Jesus gave people these glimpses of his divinity through these signs, without God helping them to see him as he truly is, people were already predisposed against him and would find a way to write him off.

At the wedding in Cana, both Jesus’ disciples and the servants saw the miracle, but we’re only told that the disciples believed in him. What was the difference? The disciples didn’t just see Jesus turn water into wine. Look at verse 11—they beheld his glory. When we look through what Christ has done in order to understand who he is, then it’s that understanding which leads us, not just to marvel at a miracle, but to worship our God. Each of the miracles show us that Jesus is worthy of our belief, and he’s worthy of our worship.

Verse 11 calls the miracles “signs”, and I think that’s so important as we close this morning. Because a sign on the road is just a piece of metal unless it’s telling you something. And each miracle in the ministry of Jesus tells us that he is who he said he is and he can do what he said he can do. When you’re heading to vacation, you don’t dwell on the signs, you fixate on your destination.

The Word of God put on flesh and drew near to us, not while we were seeking him, but while we were rebelling against him—not to punish us, but take our punishment for us. He made new wine at the wedding in Cana, and he is able to be new wine in your life today—taking what you have, stepping into the gap of your problems, and providing more than you ever imagined.

The invitation of the gospel is twofold, and from the jars to the drink we see both in our passage this morning: let Jesus fill your need to be clean before God and enjoy the blessing of a new life in Christ. And that invitation is for both non-Christians and Christians alike. Think about the disciples in this passage. Just last week we saw them proclaim their belief in Jesus as they started following him. And yet, here in verse 11 we’re told that after this first miracle they believed in him.

John’s not saying they stopped believing and started again. He’s saying that we never move past our need to be reminded of the fulfilling, redeeming, and joyful love of our Savior and Lord. You might have been a Christian for decades here this morning. Allow the signs in your life that point to Christ to continue to stir your affections and strengthen your identity in the good news of Christ. He is worthy of our belief and our worship.

Let’s pray.